Before World War II, Viridian green pigment (hydrated chromium oxide PG 18) was manufactured in Germany and widely used throughout art painting and the paintings & coatings industry. When it was introduced mid 19th century Viridian replaced a toxic arsenic color. Bacon’s palette like painters’ palettes for almost a hundred years included Viridian for muted greens and cool yellows.
About 1956, a peculiar artist’s oil color slipped on to Francis Bacon’s palette. Standing in front of “Figures in a Landscape” at a recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I saw Phthalo Green dart along the edges of Bacon’s broad strokes and watched the intensely chilly color sink into the background.
Bacon was increasingly dependent on this color until the last love of his life. During his final decade, the color is almost gone.
WWII ruined the pigment manufacturing industry like most German industries. In the decade after the war, we can assume significantly fewer pigments were available to make artists’ paints regardless of the cost. Cost was not a worry for Bacon. However, he probably could not find it when he went shopping for another tube of Viridian, especially at an art supply store in Morocco! By the mid 50’s the much less expensive Phthalo Green (Chlorinated copper phthalocyanine PG 7)was sold as “Viridian Hue.”
Who can say how strongly the artist was influenced by a single color he may have casually picked up in North Africa? He, certainly, used Phthalo Green extensively. I am sure it took some practice to deal with its incredibly high tinting strength. Francis Bacon experienced the same dark green veil of a color shifted almost too near blue where it consumes all the warmth out of yellow light inside painting layers. He, obviously, found inspiration in this green which he seems to use to increase doubt and discomfort in his paintings.
In the Color Factory every few months we had to stop down and manage Phthalo Green. Not only is the oil paint invasive, as a pigment, Phthalo Green's tiny particle size sinks into every crevice and scrape on machines and humans.
I know from experience its color intensity and rich transparency make Phthalo Green ideal for mixtures used for staining.
Bacon was a master at staining canvas to create deep background. Seeing the paintings together for the first time in 20 years, I realized again how great a painter Francis Bacon is and how much my eyes have changed since I became a colormaker. My eyes initially felt “black” velvet, until, intrigued, I stepped closer to the paintings into the complexity of Bacon's color - Phthalo Green, Prussian Blue, Ivory Black, amplified by his swift application of brushloads of bright paint (often tinted with a Quinacridone complement) on top of the surface - right in the viewer’s face.
Bacon said he intended to connect to his viewers’ nervous systems. Maybe his pathway was through the soft, matte look of his complex background colors sunk deep into the canvas. From there, he reveals the morbid jarring world that gripped the mid-20th century.
Despite the bad lighting and infer glass covering many of Bacon’s great paintings in the show, I saw his power to use color, to create visual memory in the eyes of his baboon’s ragged psyche hung over from two world wars.